Develop Your Go To Market Strategy for Your Real Customer | Shehla Rooney

Built a life-science product that works, but growth stalled? Talk to Bill about diagnosing your commercialization path before you spend years selling to the wrong buyer.
https://meshagency.com/fcmo-fractional-cmo-fractional-marketing/ 

Physical therapist turned founder Shehla Rooney (GoKnee, https://www.linkedin.com/in/shehlarooney/ ) shares how early success selling to clinicians masked a deeper problem and why realizing the patient was the true buyer changed everything. This podcast focuses on the misfires, mindset shifts, and lessons that reshaped her go-to-market strategy.

00:00 Why growth stalls when founders guess their customer
06:10 Early assumptions and selling to the wrong audience
13:45 The moment customer discovery changed the strategy
21:20 Selling the solution instead of the product
28:40 How listening replaced guessing in go to market decisions
36:05 Applying one marketing lesson across the business
43:30 A simple playbook for founders building real growth

If you’ve built something that works but growth still stalled, this episode will feel uncomfortably familiar.

In Part 1 of this conversation, I talk with physical therapist and GoKnee founder Shehla Rooney about how a breakthrough recovery tool and years of hard work were slowed by one fundamental mistake: selling to the wrong audience.

Shehla walks through the early illusion of traction from her professional network, why marketing to PTs and surgeons felt logical (but wasn’t), and how promoting features instead of outcomes missed what patients actually cared about. She also draws a powerful parallel between bad marketing and bad clinical care, skipping diagnosis and jumping straight to treatment.

Before you spend another dollar on marketing, get clear on who actually converts. DM Bill for the ICP Clarity Worksheet.

#MedTech #DigitalHealth #gotomarketstrategy

Transcript

0:00

You're not selling a product, you're selling a solution. Tens of millions of people all over the world having this surgery. It's a market that's growing by like 300% over the next decade. So we're like great. Product works. Target audience is growing. Patients all want a faster recovery. We are just going to pick a number of what we're going to charge and we're going to just be a zillionaires, right? That was our naivety. Have you ever built something that really works? It solves a real problem, but sales don't take off. That hurts. Welcome to LifeSci Continuum. In this part, one of a two part conversation with Shehla Rooney, founder of GoKnee. We take a look at how the company was born from a single patient problem. We didn't try to create a solution for a problem that we found. We created a solution for one person and didn't realize that it's actually a problem for all these people. We also didn't market it or message it the way you just said it, which is so critical. Why marketing to clinicians PTs and surgeons in this case became an expensive detour. And the moment that Shehla realized the real customer was the patient, everything got clearer. And it wasn't the pt and it wasn't the surgeon. And I went through all of them. Is it the DME company? Is it the PCP? Is it the insurers? All these people, and I realized, you know, who cares about less pain in a faster recovery and not having a rehospitalization? The patient. Alright, let's go. Well, Shehla, thanks for joining me today. It's great to have you on. Thank you for having me. So you're the founder of GoKnee, so tell me a little bit about that. Give us some background on your journey in, in launching that product. Okay. So my background is I'm a physical therapist. I have worked with geriatrics for 26 years and, , GoKnee was just a, uh, a solution to one individual, like now it's been over six years ago, but just a knee replacement patient, a patient who had knee replacement. Wasn't doing well, should have been doing well, was motivated, compliant, you know, healthy for, um, you know, in all aspects and just wasn't getting the results he wanted. And his surgeon was talking about doing another procedure, so he just pretty much said just. Tell me what I gotta do and I'll do it. Um, and he was coming to therapy. Anyways, long story short, we built something. So two other therapists and I, we built something, went to a local hardware store, put something together that mimicked our hands, and we showed him how to do some techniques that we were doing in the clinic and sent him home. And, uh, lo and behold it worked. He didn't need the procedure. He, you know, recovered, had a great recovery and, uh, GoKnee. Was born from there. You mentioned that a couple of you got together. Do you have multiple founders now or are you the sole founder? We started as multiple founders. Um, what I've learned in business is you don't need three really intelligent physical therapists to run a business. Mm-hmm. Um, you probably need one really good physical therapist, and then you need people with other skills, finance, business, marketing, you know, uh, design, whatever. Uh, IT so, but, uh. I would've loved to have them still on this journey, but COVID happened if anybody remembers what that is. Um, and it was really hard on the other founders, and due to personal and financial reasons, um, they decided to step away. And so I took over. So as of right now, and as of the last few years, I have been the sole solopreneur of GoKnee. So that's great. You had mentioned that you didn't necessarily need clinical founders. You would be maybe better served having some other expertise in other brains in the room. Um, talk about that briefly. You mentioned I think business legal marketing, give me kind of a what that looked like for you. Well, I mean, initially I was devastated when I found out that, you know, they weren't going to proceed forward with this journey. I mean, I was all in. Um, but in hindsight, you know, you learn that things happen for a reason and you know, since their departure, I have learned that. The value of three physical therapists running a business about a healthcare product is really not. Like if we could handpick, if today I could handpick partners with me in, uh, to run this company, you know, I'm not going to pick two other PTs. It just doesn't even make any sense. You need a diverse range of skills, and we all had the same skills. Like we were great clinicians, we were all patient focused, we were all healthcare focused. We did not know pricing strategies. We did not know. Marketing, sales. We didn't know accounting. We didn't know business structure, the legal. So yes, I would say that, you know, moving forward, if I was starting a business today, I'm not going to find two people that are similar to me. I'm going to find people that have expertise beyond what I have right their skillset complements yours rather than is a redundancy. I felt like we were all coming at the product business from the exact same angle we had. No, you know, and actually it inhibited our growth. For the first few years. We were so focused on the patient. We couldn't come up with business strategies, we couldn't come up with pricing strategies. We couldn't look at it as a business. We were looking at it from a healthcare lens, which is how do we get it in the hands of every patient, um, which ended up equaling zero profitability. Okay. So it was not an asset, it was a hindrance to us. You know, again, we didn't know it at the time. Okay, that makes sense. Um, and that's what we'll be talking about today is some lessons learned as, as you've gone along, let's talk about, our focus is really on marketing, you know, commercialization of devices and technology. So tell me a little bit, and we'll focus on that. Tell me a little bit about when you first realized, okay, you know, we really need to actually market. It took longer than it should have. You know, again, our healthcare mindset was we just built something that we had not seen, you know, and at that time we had like 50 years of collective experience and we, we knew there wasn't products out there or we would've been using them with our patients. So we knew we had a product that was new. We knew that it was revolutionary, like meaning there was nothing else out there like it that the patient could use at home. We had plenty of tools in the clinic that they could come use, but we wanted them to have something they could do every day at home. We knew that it was a growing market, like, I mean, like there's millions of people. Actually tens of millions of people all over the world having this surgery. It's a market that's growing by like 300%, you know, over the next decade. So we're like great product works. Target audience is growing. You know, patients all want a faster recovery. We are just going to pick a number of what we're going to charge, and this is going to be, we're going to just be a zillionaires, right? That was our naivety. And when that didn't happen. Meaning, um, and I guess it's something called like I learned something about the innovation or the product adoption cycle. Mm-hmm. I realized that those initial sales that we had a boom in, you know, when we first launched it was really our network. The people we knew, right, the health professionals we had worked with, colleagues, former colleagues, former employers, former therapists, former healthcare professionals that just knew us and trusted us as health professionals. They all bought it and we were like, oh my goodness, this is fantastic. Like it's going to be so huge. But then that fizzles out. And then you're like, okay, we've already tapped our market, the people that we knew, they've all bought, and now what are we going to do? How are we going to get, how do we find, you know, more people that know us that are going to buy this product? And when that happened, we were like. That's, at the time, I didn't know what marketing was. I didn't even know what sales were. I just, you know, I just knew it as a health professional when people came in and sold me products, but I didn't see the marketing aspect of it. And so at that point, I remember someone kind of giving me the analogy of, you know, um, there's a brand new restaurant in town and it's like. You know, you just, you walk by it down the street, but it's got paper covering the front windows and there's no sign outside and you don't even know that it's there and you're just walking by it all day long and you're looking for a grand brand new restaurant, but you have no idea it's there. And they're like, that's kind of what GoKnee is. It's this restaurant with paper on front of it. So even though people are looking for it, they don't know it's there. They don't know how to find it. And you have done nothing to help them find it. And then we were like, oh, that's marketing. Like we need to figure that out. Right, right. And you know, sometimes in the case of new innovations, the market doesn't know that there's a solution to a problem. They've, you know, they've lived, they've, they've, um, served the market for so many years and there hasn't been a good solution. You know, there might be undesirable solutions, there might be. While we get to this point with a patient, we don't have any options. We just have to go this route. So if they don't know that there's a solution like yours, they don't even know to look for it. They're just used to doing it whatever way that they've been doing it. And we do find that a lot with innovations that are, that, that are truly innovations. Like they're not a minor tweak to an existing thing where you can piggyback on, um, you know, the expected, uh, search and discovery and what that typical process looks like. Like if you really created something that solves a problem. That there isn't a solution for people don't know to look for it. Well, and what you've just said took me years to even figure out what you just said, which is, you know, um, you're not selling a product, you're selling a solution. Right. You know, so the thing is, we, we didn't. Try to create a solution for a problem that we found. We created a solution for one person and didn't realize that it's actually a problem for all these people, but we also didn't market it or message it the way you just said it, which is so critical and, and it comes so easily to people who are in marketing. But when you're a business owner, a product creator, I'm going to say a health professional, you know, we weren't thinking of that. We have a solution to a problem they have. Like, and I, it sounds so crazy to me now, um, again, I'm six years into the journey now. It's so obvious to me, but back then it was like, I'm trying, I was promoting the features like, oh, it gets your knee to bend more. Oh, it gets your knee to straighten more. You know, in hindsight, at the time, I was just pushing features that the patient really didn't care about. The patient cared about walking without a limp. The patient cared about being able to go up and down the steps to their daughter's home. But again, I had no idea. So, like you just said, we were. Selling something. Didn't even know the, the gravity of the problem that we were solving, the pain point that we were solving for so many, we had no idea. So again, it was like even if you tore out the papers off the front of that restaurant. You still didn't tell people how good the food was. You didn't tell them how good the, you know, atmosphere was. So I feel like there was stages in our marketing, like, you know, once one was the restaurant with the paper covered, you know, one was the restaurant with the paper removed, you know, and then we just kept on progressing to make sure that when people walked by that restaurant, they just knew exactly what they were getting. Your marketing evolved over time. And what do you think drove that? You know, it wasn't a, a set-it-and-forget-it, you know, one and done. It, you, you sort of took this, um, like maybe a, a stepped or a phased approach to it. Um, talk a little bit about how you got there because you, you weren't initially doing marketing and so you started, and then you, you discovered things along the way. Talk a little bit about that, you know, at the beginning maybe what did you tackle first? Um, and then how a good question. Yeah. How did it evolve? Yeah. I, I feel like this has been, and to this day still, I think it's not, marketing is never a set-it-and-forget-it, right? It's constantly changing and constantly evolving. Um, but I would say that, you know, initially I didn't know what marketing was. I didn't understand the difference between marketing and sales. So pretty much the first person that put their hand up and said, Hey, I can do this for you. I can increase your sales. I was like, yay, I'll pick you. Like, you know, it was really the first volunteer that met a budget. Um, I just, you know, would choose them and then you'd go like six months in and you're like, sales aren't increasing, like, what is happening? And you know, and then you. Dive deeper when you're realizing there's more revenue going out than coming in. And then when you start asking questions, you're like, I'm sorry, you're, you're marketing people in Mexico. Like, when did that happen? You know? Or you're just like, why are people buying my product? You know, at this stage of the recovery, that doesn't even make sense. And I didn't, I didn't know to correlate that the messaging that we were doing was enticing these types of customers, but they were the wrong customers. But again, as a business owner. We don't sit there and spend all the time to learn about the ideal customer and that avatar and, you know, all like, I, I felt like what was happening was he, and again, I always use a health professional, uh, example, like when a patient comes to me for the very first time, I do a detailed intake. Mm-hmm. By getting the detailed intake, you find out when the problem started, what the problem is, all the details, all the symptoms. You find out all the information that you need to be able to come up with this effective treatment plan. But if you skip that, if you skip that phase. Someone just comes in and says, I have knee pain. And you don't ask all the questions and you'll come up with a treatment plan. It is ineffective. And then what? So this is what I did in essence, I, you know, met people who diagnosed the issue when I just said, I wanna increase sales of GoKnee. Mm-hmm. And then whatever they said was the treatment plan. And I said, sounds good. Then we did that treatment plan for three to six or nine months or longer, and then we're like, that didn't work. Let's regroup and let's come up with another treatment plan. And then sometimes that involved a different agency and you start it all over and then another agency and you start it all over. And I didn't do it like one month. I mean, I gave 18 months. I gave a long time for people to diagnose this problem, but what I realized. Again, in hindsight, they were offering me treatments without understanding the underlying problem. Um, and so they didn't work. So again, just like in healthcare, I can't treat your knee pain if I don't know what's causing it. Um, but patients will do what I tell them to because they trust me, because I'm the pt, just like I trusted the marketing agencies. But you know, no disrespect to them. I take full responsibility. I didn't know who my customer was. I didn't know how to, uh, access them. I didn't understand my messaging. I didn't understand the importance of branding. I didn't understand the advantage of doing a competitive analysis nor what questions they should be asking me so that they can make the correct diagnosis. I didn't know any of that, but I also, you know, I take responsibility, but I kind of am really annoyed at marketing companies. For not doing the detailed intake they should have done on my company. What are you doing? Who is it for? Who's your best customer? Where have your sales been going to? I mean, now it seems so obvious to me these questions, but when the first company came along and said that this is what they wanted to do for a few months, I'm like, so I'm going to pay you. To do no treatment. You know, I'm going to pay you just to do the detailed intake for maybe a couple of months. Mm-hmm. It like, I was really frustrated. Um, 'cause you know, sales are down, you know, you're just spending money like crazy that you don't have, you know, I'm now doing it by myself. I was so frustrated. And then you have this company come say, I want, you know, charge a, a gazillion amount of dollars to do this deep dive and we're not going to generate you probably any sales for the first three to four months. You know, I, I remember thinking like, there is no way I'm going to do this, but, you know, then I realized. This is the first company that actually wants to do a detailed intake and diagnose my problem before they can come up with a treatment plan. And it was the best thing. Like what a difference compared to all the other agencies. I think there are some parallels with having a, like a general practitioner who can you go in and say, Ugh, you know, I've got a pain in my side. And they kind of go through some high level, you know, diagnosis and they dig into it. And then they might refer you to a specialist to dig in further. I mean, there's, there might be a limit to how much they can get into, but they can generally direct you in the right direction. I think. I think what we run into with marketing agencies, um, is that they tend to specialize in one or two things. Now they, they all come to the table saying they do everything, but they don't, they're typically, they have generally the expertise of the founder, whatever their background. Was in, that's what they do really well. Anything else is a bolt-on. Um, and it never quite gets the attention that it needs to at that agency. And if you get a content agency, you're only ever going to get content. You know, if you have a branding agency, you'll only ever get brand building. Um, you know, it's rare that a smaller agency that can service a startup brings together all the pieces. That you need to actually grow your business. So there's, there's actually a problem in the industry with being able to provide that level of capability that you need at a price point. Um, and on the other side, like I've worked with enough founders to know, something I hear all the time is I don't need to do that. I am my customer. Um, I know exactly what they need. I don't need to go through all of this discovery. And honestly, you don't need to go through months of discovery. Typically you can get most of what you need in a couple of weeks. You know, um, uh, even, even in highly technical, uh, products, you can get enough of what is needed between a seasoned marketing professional and a clinical technical expert to get what you need to launch the product. But you hit a couple of, uh, sore spots in that if I have a hammer, I'm going to, everything looks like a nail and what I hear again and again and again is that, um, there is a gap between the business vision of a clinical or a technical founder and then what, what most agencies are, which is an execution arm. There isn't that critical thinking. There isn't that strategy that aligns with the business needs, but also pulls in the right technical, you know, the tactical team to do the work that's needed. To piggyback off that like. That sounds like a dream to a business owner. Mm-hmm. And again, I'll use the therapy analogy. You come to me for a knee pain, you shouldn't be the one suggesting what you should be doing. You shouldn't come to me and say, I think I need to do some squats. Mm-hmm. And then me go Sure. Like, no, like you don't know what you need. I am the expert. Now, I'll tell you what I think is different in the marketing experience that I have seen. If you come to me and I'm a geriatric specialist, okay? The older adult. And let's say you tell, you know, you're, you're 18 years old with a knee problem. Mm-hmm. The difference is, I believe I'm going to be like, Hey, I have a friend for you. I have a PT friend that knows you, knows the conditions for an 18-year-old. They've been treating them for decades. Let me send you to them because I can do some benefits, but I'm going to reach a ceiling of how good I can do for you because it's not my level of expertise, what I learned in marketing. Nobody did that to me. Like at, in hindsight, I look back at all the agencies I've used over the last six years. I mean, and I, I say all the, there's probably been five. Okay. But not one of them said, you know what? I specialize in local mom and pop shops. You're not that, you know? Right. I was an e-commerce international product business. Right. That's different than a service business that's different than a local mom and pop shop. And you know, I feel like. You nailed it. Every hammer was different with each agency, but I was the nail to whatever their hammer type was. Mm-hmm. So some liked event planning, you know, so let's do some local events. Well, you know, GoKnee is not for Middle Tennessee. It's just not. Right. So same thing, another lady, yeah, another agency was big on social media marketing and that's great. But again. My people aren't on TikTok or they're not on Instagram, and even if they are great, when my budget is overflowing, we'll just piggyback and do it. But that's not my primary channels of where my customer is. So I just felt like a lot of people were like, this is what you should do. And I was like, okay, because I did it no better. So that's my frustration as a business owner, and I'm sure anybody listening who is a business owner is our frustration is we start to not trust. The marketing companies because they've just continued, and I don't wanna say did us wrong, but led us astray, cost us money, didn't increase the sales. Mm-hmm. You know, didn't help advance our company to understand it better so that we could increase sales. That's my frustration. Big time. I think one of the, the big challenges they face, and it's why, you know, we've adjusted the approach with our group. We've made a couple of big changes around this is that with a lot of agencies, they really don't have a senior executive that gets the business. They, they're there to put your business first and really understand your buyer, your buyer's needs, and then what they need from you. Um, and then how they buy from you. And if you have a group that you know, generally speaking, does digital marketing. They might sell you social and blogging and a monthly email blast, but that has nothing to do with my patient or my customer. It is where, where does my patient live? Um, and where do they get their information and how can I get in front of them with what I need? Um, and they might not align with what you're doing here, but that agency isn't built. To accommodate that particular need. Um, and we see that all the time. Well, and I'll tell you that. I believe. Now, obviously if you go interview these agencies I've worked with in the past, but I believe I was a really great business owner to work with, meaning I knew what I didn't know. I wasn't telling them what I wanted to do. I was open to whatever they suggested, you know, tell me what content you want me to create. I got 26 years of clinical experience, like I know that customer. That patient who's having knee replacement surgery or hasn't even, I know them better than anybody and I think that's like a, a huge value add when your business owner knows their customer really well. Right? I just need you to extract from me what information you need. What do you need me to write about? What do you need me to do videos about? What do you want me to like, just extract it from me? And I had the hardest time. I wasn't the business owner that was like, you're going to do Facebook ads, or, this is the only thing we're going to do. Like, no, I knew what I didn't know. I was kinda like, this is who I want to help. These are the people that I get the sales from that are the easiest customers. Like how do we replicate that? Like, I thought I was asking all the right questions. Um, but again, I felt like with a lot of these agencies. I felt like I knew more, meaning I'm like, I'm sorry. Why are we not targeting ads to like Florida and Arizona and, and Texas? Like, that's where a lot of these sales are happening. And you know, they'd give me an answer and I'd be like, okay, I guess, I guess they know what they're talking about. Mm-hmm. So that unknown for business owners, it's really frustrating. Like we feel like it's the abyss of marketing, like we know it's important, but then if you don't find good marketing firms, it almost devalues that service. When I know for me personally, an e-commerce international product marketing is the only way I penetrate the market. Right? It is the only way. Yeah. And, and for something like that too, um, to get overly like prescriptive, something like an SEO, which every, you know, marketing agency will try to sell. Um, because it, I mean, SEO's pretty easy and it's a way, it's an easy way to make for agencies to make money and with something where people don't know to search. For a product that didn't exist yesterday, um, right. SEO doesn't necessarily plug directly into that. It's part of it, but it's not the main way. Um, and so you need to use other things like online behavior. You need to use some of your, you know, geotargeting to get the right locations. Um, you need to use other tools and to do that, you really need to understand Your customer, you know, the, the client's customer and their behaviors. There is a component that is, it is really messaging. You know, copywriting is s so completely brushed aside today. Um, actually most of what we see now is AI generated and it all sounds exactly the same. Um, so there's, there's a lot there. But, um, you, you had maybe a, a, a couple of misfires along the way, things where you, you started talking about you spent a lot of time doing things. Maybe some of the things you're doing were things that needed to be done, but maybe at the wrong time. You said that you started doing some particular type of marketing right out of the gate. How did you get going and how did you know, aside from, I mean, maybe you knew because you weren't getting the sales, but what led you to the next thing? What was that? Specifically, if you don't mind talking about it, I had so many misfires. I will tell you that the biggest one that's jumping out is that because of the early sales we had with the health professional connections, we thought that that's the realm that we needed to go to. And so we still had our health professional hat on, so we were like, we're three PTs. We want this for all our patients. So every PT will want this for their patients. So our marketing efforts, we're going after the physical therapist. Because we thought, they thought just like us, um, and they don't, so we didn't understand that not every physical therapist wants to change how they do their current practice, that they're willing to learn a new product, you know? Um, so a lot of our marketing efforts were trying to educate physical therapists about this new product that they had no intention to learn about. Mm-hmm. So, you know. We were creating print materials, marketing materials. We were, um, trying to get more research projects underway. We were trying to see what trade shows we needed to go to, what promo, you know, um, products we needed to take to these trade shows. Completely the wrong direction. But at the time we were health professionals and we were like, the only way that patients are going to know about this is if their PT tells them about it. And so we, we invested money and time and effort and materials and I still have products that will never get used. And now it's an old logo, you know, um, at trade shows, because it took us a long time to, to realize PTs, I'm not going to say they don't care. It's not their priority. You know, my priorities, knee replacements, but you know, I have a sister that's a PT who was focused on concussions. Uh, another PT friend of mine is focused on, you know, um, manual therapy and that's all they wanna do, or, you know, different techniques. It was, it was, you know, looking back, it was so naive of us to think that. All these PTs are going to want to learn something very specific about a very specific patient population. Knee replacements, home programs, a knee product, but we spend so much time and so much money and so much effort targeting health professionals. And then we pivoted and went to orthopedic surgeons, which was way worse. You know, we're like, if the PTs are not going to do it, we're going to go to the surgeons because the surgeons will tell the PTs what to do. And then we went full court press on orthopedic surgeons. Again, wrong target audience. They had no intention to figure out the post-op recovery of the patient. They're too busy focusing on the surgical technique, anesthesia protocols, you know, robotics and all this other stuff. So you can imagine how much time and effort and revenue. Not revenue, uh, expenses went into trying these different, who we thought were our ideal customer for GoKnee, that they're going to want to buy GoKnee or endorse it. So wrong. I can see that. I'm thinking back to one client that I had that where their market was the surgeon. They were really pushing hard. Um, and they were, they were, I guess they were going down the path of. Altruism, this is better for the patient long term. And you know, to some extent that is important. But we don't work in a vacuum. We work in a system. And that system, at least here in the United States, is really about money. And so one of the challenges was, um, we just couldn't cut through the noise. It was such, such a small product for super niche application. And so the way that we cut through is in, in this particular case, um, they did not want re-op, re-op cost. The, the system, their, their hospital system, a lot of money. And they were, they were dinged, I can't remember exactly the specifics, but they would get dinged, um, at, at an expense level if they had somebody come in for a re-op for this particular procedure. And so they were driven to have fewer re-op, have fewer returns in a case like yours. Um, if a, if a surgeon were to recommend a particular treatment or path, would, would that be a driver for them re reducing, re-op or do they want them to come back for another surgery? No, that's a great question. It's a great question. So, um, I think what you're saying re-op, you're like rehospitalizations or like, you know, meaning having to go back in and do a something, something else. You're right. Yeah. So insurance do they do like penalize you, it affects your outcome measures, affects your reimbursement, all that stuff. But again. It's a very specific part of a very specific surgery that I can help reduce the rehospitalizations, right in that amount of timeframe. I can improve their outcomes, but I also, there were so many things. Some, some surgeons don't even know how they get reimbursed. Okay. True, true. So you're sitting there talking about how it can improve outcomes and affect all this, and they don't even understand that, right? Mm-hmm. Some surgeons are only focused on pain protocols. They're, they're, they're, maybe the company they work for wants to reduce narcotic use, and so they're only focused on that. So I don't, I don't fit any of that. Some surgeons think their outcomes are just fantastic, but they don't even know what. Fantastic outcomes are because they haven't rehabilitated thousands of knees and they're not going to hear from a PT about, I mean, you can't even tell a surgeon that, Hey, actually like 115 degrees at four weeks is not okay. Like I can get them 115 degrees in seven, eight days. You can't even have that conversation. So to me it was such a lofty, and surgeons, you can't get your time with them to ask them these questions. Let me, let me talk to a thousand surgeons to find out what their pain points are. You can't even get that. So again, marketing taught me who is the customer you can get in front of. That you can find clearly what their pain point is, and then do you have a solution to that pain point? And it wasn't the pt and it wasn't the surgeon. And I, and I went through all of them. Is it the DME company? Is it the PCP? Is it the, um, insurers? Is it, you know, all these people? And I realized, you know, who has a pain point? You know, who cares about less pain and a faster recovery and not having a rehospitalization the patient? Right. And, and the thing is, because I didn't know what marketing could do. I didn't know that I could access them. So I only thought as a health professional, I can access health professionals, trade shows, marketing, uh, uh, national agencies, you know, organizations that I'm members of. It didn't occur to me that I could find the millions and millions of people around the world that have chronic knee pain and are worried about this surgery and are wanting to have answers on how to have the best recovery possible. I didn't know. That, that's what marketing could do. And I mean, again, if I could in hindsight, you know, remove a mistake I made, I would've right from the get go, I would've gone after the patient instead of all the years I spent trying to overcome surgeons. And like you said, you used the word altruistic. I thought everybody would want a faster, less painful recovery for their patient. It is not true. And I had one surgeon who blew my mind. Um, he was from New York and I just remember on a phone call and he only took a phone call 'cause someone said, you should talk to this, to this lady. And I just remember him saying, can I ask you why do you think I care? And I'm like, excuse me. And he goes, why do I care if they can go up and down stairs in, you know, six weeks or six months? Why? Why do I care? And I just remember thinking to myself, what a jerk. Right. But I will tell you, it blew my mind because I was like, they don't, they, they, they don't care about it because they want to make sure there's no infection, there's no, you know, problem with the surgery. There's no hospital readmission. They don't care how quickly they walk without a limp. And anyways, all that to be said, it was a blessing when you rip the bandaid off and my like, gushing started happening, I was like, they, that is not a problem that they are trying to solve. I moved on. Yeah, I mean, that's a really great point.'cause I've, I've heard some stories about people who will have a conversation like that and say, well, the market doesn't care about me. You know, this person doesn't get it. When you look at it, take a step back and pretend for a moment it's not your baby, it's not the thing that you've spent years developing. And just get out of those shoes for a second and, and hear the critique. Uh, you know, the, the simple question that you can ask, you can put yourself in their shoes and say, what's in it for me? Now it sounds super selfish on the surface level, but when you, again, take a step back and you, you ask that critically, then you get a sense of what are the needs that your product meets for that particular user, if they are even a user. And if you find that you're not meeting any of the needs, they're not your. They're not the right fit for this. There's a, a methodology that I was trained on and we use quite a bit, um, later in the marketing process, but typically it's in the product development process. That's the job to be done methodology. And what we do is we look to observe how a user goes about their day, how they use different products, what they do today instead of what it is that we've built and we're selling. And it helps inform where our opportunities are. So it's, it's a job to be done methodology. What job is your customer hiring your product to do? Um, and there's, there's a lot of detail on that out there, but it's a, it's, I think, a really important exercise for founders, product people, you know, marketers to go through, um, at least during, during the, you know, the promotional, the advertising, the strategy phase. But if you have an opportunity to do it. During the product development phase, it can take you down paths that you might have never thought because your focus may be on this, this key area, but if you understand kind of the bigger picture and the specific use cases, um, and the jobs that your customers are hiring the product to do that can save you years of, of spinning wheels. Um, but that's the type of thing where, where if you, if you envision this buyer is exactly right for us. Particularly in a case I think you were describing, where you are the buyer, of course we're going to sell to more people like me or you. Um, and then you apply a job suite on methodology and you go there and then you start uncovering, uh, what those needs are or maybe the needs aren't there, and then you say, okay, I know, I know I have a product. I know I have a solution. Who's the next buyer? And then you can save that. That money with marketing agencies and all that expense. Well, and it's interesting because not one marketing agency in the first four, probably four and a half years said. With clarity, stop going after the health professional. Like, I kind of wish somebody had just said, like, again, in the healthcare analogy with the knee pain, you know, imagine if I could have just said, you know what, you just need to go to a chiropractor and they're going to take care of this, and you're done. Like, whoa, mind blown. But like, it was almost like I, I feel like every. Leap I've taken in my company was me putting a stance and being like, okay, I am going to stop. I'm going to like, look at what's happened, what's working, and I'm going to pivot and I'm going to find now a marketing firm and tell them what I've learned. And I just feel like that was the wrong way to go. I, I really feel like the marketing firms should have led me instead of me leading them.'cause by the time me, the business owner with the healthcare professional background, with no marketing experience finds out there's a problem. I, I'm almost like, shame on them. That's how I felt like, you know,'cause again, so many people kept telling me all the different ways to message the surgeon. I kind of wish someone had said, do you know what's in it for them? Like you just said that phrase, it took me years to find out the what's in it for them and try to come up with, you know, getting in their brains and what's in it for them. But in order to figure that really out, you have to talk to many, many, many surgeons and they're a hard audience to get time with. Mm-hmm. So again, I think part of marketing is who can you access? How can you confirm what their pain points are like? Mm-hmm. And the patient, I can find that information out from the patient. I can get any patient to call me if I'm like, Hey, I'd like to talk to you about your knee pain for free. I mean, they'll do it. I can't do that to a surgeon or a pt. So again, one of the biggest mistakes. Was, I wish someone had ripped off my healthcare hat and said, stop thinking about you need the credibility of the surgeon or the PT to back this product. Go straight to the consumer who is looking for solutions that you have that can help them solve a problem. Um, that would've been the biggest aha moment for me. Like I just, I feel like that's the biggest. Piece of wisdom that would've saved me. A lot of money spent and a lot of time wasted and a lot of marketing materials created that were never used. Yeah, I mean, it comes back to market fit. Um, it's like, what is, what is the biggest benefit here? Well, we can get, get you back up to, you know, walking or climbing stairs, pain-free, you know, in weeks instead of months. That's a value prop. To really one, one person in the whole chain of that healthcare scenario. And that is the patient. Um, you might, you might try to go to the clinicians and say, well, we can help you, help your patient, but understanding the drivers there, nobody, nobody's going to say, well, I don't wanna help my patient. Um, but they can give you signals that they, they won't buy. So you're, you're spot on there. You're spot on. That's really great. I also realized, again, through trial and error, that if the patient loved your product, guess who the patient told, they told their PT and they told their surgeon. And so I got the, the conversations I've had with PTs and surgeons across the US and even the world is because the patient championed my product. So, you know, I've also heard in marketing that, um. A good product with great marketing will be successful, you know? Mm-hmm. Uh, but a great product with, okay, marketing is not going to be successful. And I thought, like, I have a great product. I just need to find great, uh, marketing. But yeah, I, I realized I could now access the health professional through the patient. But again, it was a, a, a multi-year process. For me to just hone in on the, on the patient who I understood the best, who had the biggest reward by using my product, and then didn't realize that they would champion and tell everybody about this great product, including the surgeon and including the pt. And so they in essence, wheedled out. Instead of me finding the diamond in the rough or the needle in the haystack, the surgeon that's willing to learn something new, or the PT that's willing to adopt something new, they kind of filtered them out for me. And so it became a beautiful process. I feel like when marketing really works mm-hmm. Everything starts to get a little easier and a little seamless instead of so swimming uphill all the time. Well, great marketing really aligns with the natural. Customer's journey and people talk a lot about the customer's journey, but they forget the customer part of it. They put, forget to put the customer at the heart of that always. You know what we see when we're, we're coming into diagnose, these is a company centric customer journey. And so they'll put, they'll go all in on one, you know, channel. Well, all we're going to do is blog and all the blogging is about them. It doesn't have to do with the customer. Um, and so that, you know, what, what you're describing here is really understanding who your customer is and then giving them the tools to empower them to be your best advocates and champions for you after the success. Well, thank you so much. It was great seeing you today. Yeah. Great questions. Good questions, bill, if you made it here, thank you. If you haven't already, like share and subscribe to the channel. If you wanna learn more about this topic, I expand on it below as well as in my LinkedIn newsletter. 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